31st December 2015 is a sad
day. On the first day of 2016 CICS version 3 will go out of service.
For more information see here:
CICS version 3 will always be a special
release for me as it was the first CICS release I ever worked on. I
was a member of the functional test team for the web services
functionality. I spent many a day (and a few nights) building and
executing test cases to try and find fault with the product. Looking
back at the release it is important to note the amazing technology
that CICS version 3 brought to the party.
We allowed existing customer
applications to be exposed as web services. Not startling in itself
but when you consider that the customer didn't even need to recompile
any of their source code in order to exploit this capability. This
allowed customers valued assets to be exploited by any process
running on any platform in any language.
Since its inception CICS programs have
been forced to share data through a 32kb area of memory known as the
commarea. This area of data could be passed between programs running
in different address spaces. Several customers had requested that we
increase this limit to something larger as for them 32kb was
becoming a constraint. Version 3 delivered channel and container
technology that allowed programs to share blocks of data in named
containers within a named channel. Not only did this alleviate the
data limit constraint it also allowed that data to be functionally
divided into separate pieces. No longer would the error code be at a
certain offset into the commarea it could now be in it's own
container.
We also extended our TCP/IP support to
allow CICS systems to communicate over TCP/IP as a replacement for
ISC connections over SNA. CICS programs could now be called over a
TCP/IP network using an IPIC connection thus reducing the requirement
for SNA networks. Each release since we have been adding capability
to this feature, allowing function shipping over IPIC etc.
As the release of 3.1 marked the start
of my CICS career it was also the start of a journey for CICS. Each
release we have created capability that allows our customers to drive
further value from their CICS installations. Developing new
applications or deriving new value from existing programs CICS has
shown that it is a modern, flexible and High quality transaction
processor ready to meet the demands of a modern enterprise.
That journey continues today with the
announcement of some feature packs for CICS that extend current
releases of the product into new and exciting areas. For more
information see:
These announcements excite me (although
I have known about them for a while). Once released these
capabilities will allow customers to easily integrate mobile
application development with CICS resources. It will also allow them
to integrate batch workload with existing transactional workloads.
If you are a CICS customer why not have a look at the announcements
and start thinking about where the new technology could take your
business.
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